Tinke, Crystaltile, and a good old hex editor is all what you need.
You'll need translators fluent in Japanese too, the way the Japanese is written doesn't bode well at all with machine translators (which are very crappy when it comes to Japanese, btw). I'm doing a Ninokuni DS translation and the project is stalled because no translators are available (well, there were three but they disappeared all of a sudden after translating a few lines ... the script is big in games like that).

The game needs extensive reprogramming and reverse engineering. It has several custom compressions, all file formats are custom, and by default only supports double byte text. It is not a beginner project.

Given the right tools and the right team, this can be done. Although there is no team nor tool at the moment
But I am still going to take a crack at it. I like to see a translation of one of the few games that has ever had Full Metal Panic in it.

Well, of course it can be done. It's just that, if you have to ask how, then you can't do it. And I doubt you'd find other people willing to hack the whole game for you. So you should start with something simpler.

Nope. Korean and Chinese translations are simple enough in the sense that they could put a reasonable font and script within the constraints of the Japanese version. They don't need to make the font cleaner like English requires...
And then because there is absolutely no reason for them to translate it for English. Plus JP>KR>EN isn't the most ideal combo

Nope. Korean and Chinese translations are simple enough in the sense that they could put a reasonable font and script within the constraints of the Japanese version. They don't need to make the font cleaner like English requires...
And then because there is absolutely no reason for them to translate it for English. Plus JP>KR>EN isn't the most ideal combo

Click to expand...

Lol, if only I could contact them. I'd try translating for them in english in a heartbeat.

Nope. Korean and Chinese translations are simple enough in the sense that they could put a reasonable font and script within the constraints of the Japanese version. They don't need to make the font cleaner like English requires...
And then because there is absolutely no reason for them to translate it for English. Plus JP>KR>EN isn't the most ideal combo

Click to expand...

Yup. pretty much. 1 character in Japanese/Korean/Chinese = 6 characters in English.
As for the translation issue, shouldn't matter much as long as there's a guy who is very avid fan of each and every single one of the anime series... which is highly unlikely lol